


i'll find a way to get back to your side

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: 1920s, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Reincarnation, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He dies on the Wall, in his sister’s arms, and the last thing he sees besides her face is Robb Stark smiling at him.</i> Robb and Theon get a chance to make things right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll find a way to get back to your side

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, some backstory: one day I whipped up a [a fanmix](http://8tracks.com/winchesterlystarks/i-swear-you-are-mine-robb-theon) for reincarnated!Robb/Theon. (Feel free to weep over my sad lack of Photoshop skills.) I basically said "one day I'll write a fic about this".
> 
> This is that fic. It wandered off-track a bit, as you can see, and languished in my drafts for months before I finally decided to take a crack at it again for Throbb Week. It's not the reincarnation/coffeeshop AU I was hoping to write for the week, but AHAHA YES, THIS THING IS DONE. /weeps
> 
> Also: **SPOILERS.** For ASOS and ADWD in particular, and major character death in the beginning and in one or two parts.

He dies on the Wall, not as Reek but as Theon, _Theon Greyjoy, a son of Pyke,_ thank the gods for that small mercy.

He’s dying when Asha finds him, runs to his side and begs him not to die, please, he _promised_ he wouldn’t, not so far from the sea, but he has learned that there are promises he cannot keep, no matter what he does.

“Sister,” he whispers, “I’m sorry,” and he means it.

Asha cradles him, and he can hear her whisper _don’t die now when we’re winning this war you promised you **promised**_ , before it starts to fade away to nothing.

He dies on the Wall, in his sister’s arms, and the last thing he sees besides her face is Robb Stark smiling at him, and Theon smiles and closes his eyes and goes to sleep.

(They burn his body with all the rest. Asha stands by, her face hard as stone, but when she comes into Jon’s quarters the next day to ask for her brother’s ashes so she can scatter them on the sea, her eyes are bloodshot from the tears.)

—

People say reincarnation’s a hoax, that it isn’t possible that you were once Napoleon or Shakespeare or a Roman emperor in a past life, because past lives don’t exist. You only have one shot at life, no more, no less.

But for those who screwed up their first try, sometimes fate gives them one more chance. Or two. Or more.

—

Theon runs toward the bus stop, swearing under his breath and cursing both whoever had the bright idea of setting his job interview at _nine-o-fucking-clock_ in the morning and his subconscious, for coming up with the bloodiest, most twisted nightmares ever.

He’s blaming this one on the stress. Hunting down a decently-paying job in New York is harder than it looks.

He rounds the corner. There’s a guy already there, sipping Starbucks coffee and reading John Green, and honestly Theon would’ve just passed him by had the guy not glanced up at him, had their gazes not met for one brief, shining moment.

But he does, and when he does and their gazes lock everything slots back into place, jumbled memories and vague dreams and half-fuzzy fragments suddenly fitting together and clearing up, like a veil’s been lifted from them.

Robb almost drops the book, does drop the coffee, when he all but jumps out of the bench, and Theon just wants to slump into one, because _now_ those bloody dreams make _sense_ , and he remembers so much it’s almost a surprise he hasn’t fainted from the weight of them.

“Gods,” Robb is saying, “Theon, is that—”

“It’s me,” he confirms, and tries to give him his usual casual smirk, but the memories feel too fresh in his head for it to look anything but brittle. “Fancy seeing you here, Robb.”

He fully expects him to shout, to get mad, to turn away and leave, mayhaps to kiss him if he remembers the rest, but instead Robb asks, “Why?”

_Why what,_ he wants to say, but they both know what he means, so Theon runs a hand through his hair and says, “Which part do you want to know about?”

“All of it,” is the answer. “I want to know why you killed my brothers, why you burned Winterfell—”

“I never did,” he simply says, and Robb’s voice stops. Theon looks down at his shoes, smart and professional-looking, and he wants to laugh at who he was just a few minutes ago.

“What?”

“I said I never did,” he repeats, looking back up at Robb’s stunned expression. “I didn’t kill your brothers. I took Winterfell because—because I don’t know, I wanted what was mine by rights, and I thought taking Winterfell would help. I was there, but I wasn’t the one who burned it.”

Robb opens his mouth, then closes it, then closes his eyes and scrubs his face with his hands. “I’m supposed to believe that?” he asks.

And it hurts, to hear that, hurts as much as it did the first time they knew and remembered long enough to have this talk, but Theon’s learned to mask the hurt, so he shrugs and says, “Look, if you don’t believe me, I get it.” _I don’t think I ever deserved it,_ he thinks, but it goes unspoken. “Anyway, I’m late, and I’ve got to go. It’s been nice seeing you around, Stark.”

“It’s been nice as well, Theon,” Robb replies, his expression completely neutral. There’s a tension in his voice, though, and the meaning of it’s clear enough to Theon.

He turns and walks away, and pretends it doesn’t hurt when Robb doesn’t call out his name like he should.

—

Salem, Massachusetts isn’t very welcoming. Robb knows this better than most—after all, he’s had the bad luck to be accused of witchcraft, and even worse luck to be thrown into prison for months to await a joke of a trial.

He thinks the fact that he hasn’t managed to escape at all in three months should be enough proof that he doesn’t practice witchcraft, but people will believe what they will.

But he doesn’t mind the loneliness, not truly. In fact, he isn’t lonely at all.

He still remembers when they first brought him to the jail, still remembers the flash of recognition and the memories that flooded in, Westeros bleeding into Rome seeping into Greece creeping into Italy.

“ _Robb?_ ” Theon had whispered, when his accusers and the damned witchfinder had gone off to congratulate themselves on capturing another agent of darkness. “What are you doing here?”

“Being accused of witchcraft,” Robb had answered, and despite being in chains, despite his situation, he couldn’t help but smile when Theon laughed.

“Is that some kind of jape, then?” Theon had asked, and Robb shook his head. It hurt, a little, to see the laughter disappear from his face when Theon realized what it meant. “Gods—Robb, how—”

“I don’t know,” he said, and that was the truth. It still is. “You’re to watch me, I take it?”

Theon had huffed out a brittle laugh, then, and answered, “I don’t need to watch you to know you’re innocent,” and even then, there was the weight of years and years and _years_ of memories behind his words, and Robb had felt comforted, knowing that someone believed him.

That night, and so many nights after, he’d truly known what it felt like to be comforted.

“They’ll hang you alongside me if they find you,” he says once, after one such night. There’s rain pouring down outside, and some of it is leaking into the cell, but he’s warm where he is.

“Good,” Theon answers. “I’d rather die beside you.”

He gets his wish when they find them the next day.

—

Robb doesn’t know just what draws him to the diner. It’s been three days since he last saw Theon, and all the while there are memories bubbling up to the surface, making themselves known at very inopportune moments. It’s confusing, disorienting, frustrating, because on one hand, he’s just the same guy as he’s always been, but on the other, he used to be a king ( _a soldier a spy a tailor a revolutionary a cynic an innocent—_ ).

He comes in, and the first thing his gaze lands on is Theon, sitting at a table by the window, dejectedly eating French fries.

He should turn around and walk back out, he doesn’t think he’s ready to talk to him yet, not when he’s trying to sift through more than one lifetime’s worth of memories, but his traitorous feet carry him forward instead, and he slides into the seat next to Theon.

“I didn’t know you liked French fries,” he says.

Theon’s head snaps up, and the limp French fry drops and lands on the floor. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I felt like diner food for a change,” he lies.

“Yeah, well,” and Theon gestures to the menu over the counter, “you’re out of luck. It’s all crappy.”

“As it happens, it doesn’t get much crappier than unheated ramen noodles,” Robb says, just as the waitress comes up to him.

“What can I get you, sir?” she asks.

“A salad,” he says. “And coffee. Black.” He glances at Theon, enviously staring at some kid across from them biting into a burger, then adds, “And a burger for him.”

Theon huffs in response, and says, “Hold the cheese.”

Once the waitress leaves, Robb turns to him and says, “I thought you liked cheese.”

Theon blinks, then, slowly, his mouth turns up in a smile—an honest one, the kind where it lights up his whole face and makes him look young, like the days in Winterfell when they played at being heroes. “Different lives, different tastes,” he says. “You remembered?”

“Somewhat,” Robb admits. “It’s a mess in my head right now.” There’s Westeros, that he can remember clear as day, and of course the life he’s led up until now, running parallel with each other, but there’s bits and pieces that he knows belong to other times, other lives. They’ve had talks like this before, though, that much he knows, and sometimes he’s the one giving it. “You remember everything?”

“Pretty much,” Theon confirms. “Everything just clicked when you looked at me. I’d been dreaming about it, but—but it was that look that did it.” He’s looking at Robb now, nothing but honesty on his face and in his eyes. “It worked this time.”

He’s about to ask what Theon means when he stops, remembers Chicago and London and France, among others. So many lives lived, and most are a blur in his head, but he knows enough that what had happened now didn’t always work.

“Yeah,” he says, “it did,” and resists the urge to brush his hand over Theon’s, just to know what he feels like now. There are things he still needs to figure out, after all.

But it doesn’t stop him from wondering how it would feel, to slip his hand into Theon’s.

—

“Do you permit it?”

( _am I your brother, now and always?_ )

A smile.

A hand pressing into his.

( _now and always._ )

They don’t hear the gunshots.

—

The day after the diner, Theon opens his e-mail.

The first thing he sees is something from his prospective employer—well, former prospective employer, now. “While we appreciate the interest in a position at our company, we’re sorry to say that there are no slots open for your particular skill set,” the letter reads, and it goes on to say things like “we will review your resume when a position that fits your skills opens up,” but Theon has read enough rejection letters to know what this one is.

He deletes it, closes his laptop, and heads for the door, grabbing his second-hand baseball cap off the rack. A beer. Hell, maybe something stronger, something along the lines of Dornish red.

When he gets to the bar, he orders vodka, on the rocks, and relishes the taste and the sting it leaves in his throat.

“Another,” he says to the bartender, fishing a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet with clumsy fingers.

So he has another. And another. And another. Before he knows it he’s downed his eleventh shot of vodka, and he’s planning on more when someone says, “Seven hells, Greyjoy, are you all right?”

His eyes snap up from his glass ( _why are there two of them?_ ). It’s—oh, it’s Robb. There’s two of him—no, three—how many drinks has he had again?

“Stark,” he slurs. “Fancy seein’ you here.” He pauses, searches for the right words to say. “Why’re y’here, anyway?”

“Same reason as everyone else does, when they hit the bars,” Robb says, settling into the seat next to him. “To drink. More specifically, because my ex is getting married and I got the invitation in the mail just today.”

“Sucks,” Theon remarks, but he can’t quite bring himself to really mean it.

“Yeah, it sucks,” Robb agrees.

“Your eyes are pretty.”

He blinks at him. “What?” he asks.

Theon nods. He doesn’t know what’s been keeping him from saying that—Robb’s eyes are pretty, no matter when or where or who he is. Robb himself is…well, there are other adjectives than pretty, but he can’t be bothered to think of them right now.

“They’re pretty,” he says. “Really blue. Like the sky. And other blue things, prob’ly the ocean.” He lifts up his empty shot glass in a toast, and grins at Robb. “Your ex doesn’t know what she’s missing out on.”

“Theon,” Robb says.

“And I like the way you say things,” Theon continues. “Especially when you say my name, and—”

“You’re drunk.”

Theon stops. Well, it’s true, he’s had eleven shots of vodka. “Yeah,” he acknowledges. “But that doesn’t make it any less true.”

Robb sighs, then stands up. “I’m cutting you off right now,” he tells him, prying the shot glass away from him. “You’re a terror when you’re drunk, I remember that.”

“‘M not a terror,” Theon slurs, but lets Robb pull him to his feet and leans on him as they walk out, arm draped over his shoulder. “Missed you, you know. Sometimes I think I should’ve died with you, that first time.”

He thinks he can hear Robb swallow. “God, I’m too sober for this,” he mutters, then says, just a little louder, “Can we not talk about it, right now? Where do you live, anyway?”

“A few blocks away,” Theon answers. “Um. Corner of 48th and Madison. Had it painted with a squid on the door, can’t miss it.”

“I got it,” Robb replies, and Theon smiles in reply. “Don’t lean so much, you’re heavy.”

“Are you callin’ me fat?” he jokes.

“I’m saying you’re pretty heavy,” Robb replies, but it gets a soft smile out of him so Theon counts it as a bonus. “What brought on the drinking, anyway?”

The reminder of why he started drinking in the first place serves as a mood dampener, and he bitterly says, “Got rejected. Assholes.”

“You’re not the first one it’s happened to,” Robb says. “You’ll find a better place.”

“Been looking everywhere for one,” Theon mutters. “No luck.”

“Join the club. I’m still looking too.” Robb stops, and—oh, that’s his house. “Nice place.”

It’s the typical cozy brownstone, and really Theon’s one of three tenants, but the other two are often out anyway, so he considers it his by default. The old Greyjoy sigil is painted in grey on the door, though it’s made less menacing by the flowers painted at the bottom and the mermaids, courtesy of the other two.

“S’great,” Theon agrees, and lets Robb haul him up the steps. “It’s my own, for all intents and purposes.”

“You’re just renting, I bet.”

“Still my own.” He makes to kick the door closed when they enter, but misses and stubs his toe on the door frame instead. “ _Ow!_ Fuck, that _hurt_.”

“No kicking doors when drunk,” Robb says, shutting the door with his free hand. “Now, come on, where’s your room?”

“Upstairs. Don’t haul me up, I can climb it.”

Robb gives him a withering look, says, “You can barely walk straight.”

“There’s a railing,” he stubbornly counters.

“You might miss a step, fall down the stairs and crack your head on something, and then what am I going to do?”

“Call the hospital, not that I’ll miss.” He breaks away, grips the railing and makes his way up the stairs, Robb following close behind. He won’t admit it, no amount of drink will make him admit it, but it’s nice, knowing that Robb will catch him if he falls. Not that he will ever fall, mind.

He almost stumbles— _almost_ —but manages to right himself in time, and then before he knows it he’s fumbling about, looking for his keys in his pockets. Unfortunately, all he manages to turn up are his wallet, some loose change and expired tickets to a baseball game.

“Think I lost my key,” he says.

“Here, come on, let me help.” Robb slips something out of his pocket and—wait. _Wait_.

“Since when did you have a lockpick?” Theon asks.

“Since this one locksmith tried to swindle me three years ago,” he answers, bending down and slipping the pick into the keyhole. “Fair warning, though: it’s not like the movies.”

“What’re you on about?”

“Well, for one thing,” and here Theon can hear Robb mutter something that sounds a little like _should’ve brought the other pick_ , “it takes a lot longer. And it isn’t even all that effective anymore, since lock-makers wised up and put side wards in place.”

“How d’you even know what that is?”

Robb flashes him a smile. “Wikipedia,” he says, then the smile vanishes as he turns his attention back to the lock. “At first, anyway. Now…I don’t know, I think I did know how to pick locks at some point before.”

“You did.” Theon bites his lip, tries to think back, but it’s too fuzzy for him to really recall, the way he can when he’s sober. “1920s.”

“The age of flapper dresses, speakeasies and the Lost Generation.” Robb lets out a mirthless laugh. “Yeah, I think I remember that one.”

“It wasn’t all bad,” Theon argues.

“For you,” Robb says. “I was a dick.”

“I was a drugstore cowboy ‘fore you came along, Sam Spade,” Theon says, and then sniggers, and leans against the wall. His legs feel a little too much like jelly right now for him to trust them to hold him up. “Drugstore cowboy. My _god_ , the things we said.”

“The things we watched,” Robb adds, and he’s trying to hold back laughter as well. “ _The Shanghai Gesture_ , do you remember that?”

“That was hugely depressing,” Theon says, remembering Gin Sling’s last conversation with Victoria. “I think I dragged you to see _Dressed to Kill_ afterwards, just to make myself feel better.”

“ _The Killer That Stalked New York_?”

“We made out in the back row. Missed the entire plot.” They had almost gotten caught while doing so, but damn if it wasn’t worth it. “You were a good kisser then. Are you still one now?”

“Some things I’d rather not try right now, Theon,” Robb says, softly enough that Theon almost doesn’t catch it, but he does and it’s—goddammit, of course it’s not going to be that easy. He’s been in Robb’s shoes before, been the one trying to figure out who and where and when he is, and he knows that it’s not that easy.

But goddammit, a part of him just wants to feel Robb’s arms around him, wants to feel Robb’s lips on his, and right now that part of him is very, _very_ loud.

(There’s a part of him that still, after all this time, doesn’t think he deserves this. _Any_ of this. It’s just as loud as the part of him that really wants Robb.)

—

“Well,” Robb sighs, taking off his newsboy cap, “ _that_ could’ve gone better.”

Theon shoots him a look. “You _think_?” he snaps. “We almost got _bumped off_ back there. Why did I let you talk me into being a private dick, again?”

“Because you’re wasted as a drugstore cowboy, Theon,” Robb replies, dropping into his customary seat. “And hey, at least we got the killers before they could drop somebody else.”

“They almost dropped _us_ ,” Theon says, keeping the piece of cloth over his shoulder. It could’ve been worse, he knows, but he’d liked that suit, and now some hop-head almost knifed him and ruined the damn thing. He’s still trying not to think about exactly how close he came to freaking out when he saw the man’s face, and the knife in his hand. “Wasn’t this supposed to be an open-and-shut case? How did it turn into a near-death situation again?”

Robb lets out a breath, runs a hand through his red curls. “I’ll tell you when I’ve figured that one out,” he says. “In the meantime, you doing okay?”

“I’m fine.” Theon forces a smile. “Wasn’t exactly duck soup, but besides the knife wound, I’m fine.”

“You didn’t look fine.” And there’s Robb, getting down to the heart of the situation. “You looked terrified.”

“Crazy guy wielding a knife at close range, even a copper would piss his pants.” He waves his hand. “I keep telling you, I’m _fine_.”

He tries not to swear when the last word comes out a little more desperate than he’d like. He’s still trying not to think about the man and the knife, and the memories he was so sure he’d buried.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Robb asks. “Or do you just want to go down to the nearest speakeasy and get drunk on cheap hooch?”

“If I say I’d rather be lit right now, what are you going to do?” Theon shoots back.

Robb bites his lip, then sighs, stands up, and slaps on his cap again. “Then I guess I’m coming with you,” he says. “Someone has to keep you from falling on your face when you’re completely fried and get the bum’s rush.”

“Close your head, Stark.”

“Yeah, you too. Cash or check?”

Theon stands up, closes the distance between them and presses his lips to Robb’s for a brief moment before breaking away. “Consider that a downpayment,” he says, putting his own coat on. “You coming or not?”

—

“You smell nice. _Really_ nice.”

Robb swallows. Right, Theon’s all too drunk—he probably doesn’t know half of what he’s saying. He probably won’t remember that at this point, once Robb managed to pick the lock open and get him inside, he’d fallen onto the couch and Robb had to haul him up and half-carry him to his bed.

“You smell like oranges,” Theon helpfully informs him. “I like them now.”

“You’re drunk,” Robb says. It’s the most neutral thing he can think to say right now, given that he’s hauling Theon to bed, and though he knows he’s done it before he can’t really sort out the memories in his head, can’t tell the hurt anger apart from the passion. He remembers Salem, remembers Chicago in the twenties, remembers France, but remembering’s not the same as being able to tell what happened when. Some of them have blurred into his present life and his first life, and until he can establish some lines in his head, he should probably not do anything stupid.

Like, say, carrying his… _something_ to bed.

Yet here he is anyway.

“And _you_ smell like oranges,” Theon retorts.

“Jon’s shampoo, mine ran out.” He thinks. He’s pretty sure.

“Oh.” A pause. “You should wear it more often.”

Robb can’t help it—he laughs a little, at the suggestion that Jon would actually let him borrow his shampoo. “He doesn’t trust me with it,” he says. “I put Nair in it once, a month or so ago. Even getting him to let me use it this once was a hassle.”

“S’a shame. Suits you better than it suits Snow.”

Robb lays him down on the bed, strips him of his shoes and socks. “Thanks for the compliment,” he says. “You use it on all the girls?”

“Only on you,” Theon tells him, and the honesty in his voice just—it’s too much. He has to go, before he does something stupider than what he’s already done.

“I’ve got to go,” he says.

Theon’s smile drops off his face, and he reaches out with his hand to grasp Robb’s before he can leave. “Stay,” he says. _Please_ goes unsaid, but it hangs in the air all the same.

“I can’t,” Robb doesn’t say. “No, I really have to go,” doesn’t make it past the tip of his tongue. “I can’t stay because then I might do something I’ll regret,” is lodged in his throat.

“Okay,” he says, and takes off his shoes and socks as well, before climbing into bed next to Theon.

He should leave. He should get out of here, as soon as Theon’s asleep. He should go, walk away and avoid him for days. He should do a lot of things that don’t involve getting into bed with him, even if it’s just them lying next to each other, even if Robb makes sure to keep his hand on Theon’s torso.

But then Theon smiles, and it’s not the smirks he grew used to seeing from the older boy in Winterfell. It’s not the sardonic sneers from Chicago, not the ever so rare half-smile from France.

It’s an honest, genuine smile, one straight from Salem, from Westeros before Pyke happened, from their last moments in France, from nights spent together in Chicago, from blurred and vague memories in his head, and seeing it in real life—well, whatever’s left of Robb’s resolve to leave crumbles away.

“Thanks,” Theon sleepily says.

Robb lays his hand on Theon’s torso, moves closer till there’s only a half-inch left between their bodies. “Go to sleep, Theon,” he says. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

It’s a promise, and he knows once he’s said the words that he’s going to keep it.

He finds he doesn’t really mind.


End file.
